Antelope Canyon

The Navajo call it ‘the place where water runs through rocks’ and that is literally true. One of the most unearthly places on the planet, take a look at the astounding Antelope Canyon.

Journeyed to Antelope Canyon in 2015. Enjoyed this amazing journey down the latter into the canyon. This is an amazing site mid day with the sunlight coming in to the rocks in the canyon and shinning lovely. This adventure is led by a guide, all tours require a guide. Enjoy the amazing photos from this journey.

Light somehow manages to find a way through the walls of the canyon, despite its narrowness. The color of the rock is a giveaway to those in the know – the walls of the canyon are made of sandstone. And one thing that sandstone is susceptible to is water. The medieval cathedrals of Europe will slowly weather away under the aqueous precipitation of the millennia. So it is with the Antelope Canyon – in fact it owes its existence, in one of the driest places on earth, to the erosive qualities of life sustaining water.

With a leap of the imagination, this gorgeous view upwards of twin light tubes allows us to believe we are privy to the blueprints that Mother Nature surreptitiously provides for the continuous evolution of the canyons. The spirals show us where the water has slowly but persistently eroded the sandstone through the ages. Can any man-made structure match the sheer grace of this canyon below the ground?

How the canyon formed? for the most part it is due to flash flooding. There are other sub-aerial processes involved as well but rainwater during the monsoon season is the primary culprit (if one were to assign anything like blame for this marvel of nature). There are large basins above both parts of the Antelope Canyon and the rain gathers here until it reaches a kind of critical mass.

When this happens it gushes in to the canyon. Over the thousands of millennia it took to create the full effect the water slowly but inexorably made the corridors of the canyons deeper and steeper. The hard edges of the rock were inevitably worn down and formed the flowing shapes on the rock face or is it also the work of mighty and ancient Navajo spirits or only sheer tenacious persistence of the elements or both? Flooding still happens to this day – as recently as 2006 a thirty six hour flood forced the tribal authorities to close the lower part of the canyon for half a year. The sand arising from the erosion gets everywhere.

Due to a bug, you need to click on the last photo in the grid below and you can use your arrow keys to scroll through the photos, but you must start with the last photo and use the left arrow key to view using the arrow keys. The first grid of photos takes a while to load to allow scrolling, be patient, the photos are amazing and worth the wait.